Hi I was looking at a question which was to do with how intensive rearing increases productivity and one of the marking points was ' animals are slaughtered whilst still growing, so greater amount of energy transferred to biomass' .
How is this possible? if animals are still growing, then they have not reached there greatest biomass, so how does this increase productivity?

I've seen this is the mark scheme too and agree it's a little confusing. The only thing I can think of is that when animals begin to get old, they begin to lose muscle mass (as do humans). Also by slaughtering them before growth stops, the farmer does not waste food because once it has reached full growth if the farmer kept feeding it it could be seen as a waste of money on its food as you're literally feeding it without any of the energy from food actually increasing mass. That's all I could think of really